


Correcting the Record

by Ellidfics



Series: Captain Fraudulent:  The Outtakes [42]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Oral History, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 06:15:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11480367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellidfics/pseuds/Ellidfics
Summary: Dr. Katzenberg has a unique opportunity:  to correct her work by speaking directly to its subject.  Fortunately Captain America doesn't mind.





	Correcting the Record

Transcript of interview by Josephine Katzenberg at Smith College with Steven Rogers in preparation for the revised and updated edition of her Pulitzer Prize winning book _The Genius and the Golden Boy: Captain America, Howard Stark, and the Birth of the Modern Age_

Josephine Katzenberg: Captain Rogers, thank you so much for agreeing to speak to me. This is – this is such an honor, I truly never thought - 

Steve Rogers: The honor's all mine, ma'am. You're a very good writer.

JK: You read my book, then?

SR: Just finished it on the train up from New York. It's the only one that didn't make me want to throw it out the window. That _Doomed Angel_ one was just - 

JK: My God, someone gave you that?

SR: One of the production assistants mentioned it when I filming the Marlo Donahue interview down in DC, so I checked it out of the library when I got back to New York. It was pretty - 

JK: Terrible. Absolutely terrible. How Doner ever got tenure from that piece of tripe I'll never know.

SR: [laughs] I was going to say something else, but that works. Some of those essays had me wondering if the authors were drunk. Or worse.

JK: I went to graduate school with some of those people. Alcohol was probably the least of it.

SR: Sounds like a couple people I went to school with. Art students, you know.

JK: I can guess – I read Bolton's memoir a few years ago. It sounds like things got pretty wild.

SR: Danny wrote a book? I'll add it to my list. Hang on - 

(sound of pencil on paper)

JK: List?

SR: Of things I need to know. There's so much, making lists is the only way to keep it all straight. It's been almost seventy years, you know.

JK: That makes sense. 

(sound of shuffling papers)

Would you like something? Water, coffee, tea - 

SR: Black coffee if you have it. Caffeine doesn't do much for me these days but I still like the taste.

(sound of pouring coffee)

Oh, that's good. Thanks.

JK: We have a lot of coffee roasters out here. It's one of the perks living in the country.

(they both laugh)

SR: We have a few of those in Brooklyn, too. Sometimes they're a little - 

JK: Pretentious?

SR: - yeah, that. But some aren't bad. I've started selling my drawings at one of them – just sketches and some watercolors, more practice stuff than anything else. They're not my best work but people seem to like 'em and it keeps me busy when I'm on the duty roster and can't start something involved.

JK: So you still draw and paint?

SR: Of course I do. Kept me sane right after I woke up. 

(five second pause)

I'm not sure Tony Stark has forgiven me for calling his building ugly, but I spent two hours drawing it one afternoon before the attack on New York and all I could think was, “That looks like something Ted Geisel would have done when he was drunk.” Skyscrapers shouldn't look like a cartoon.

JK: You'll get no argument from me. I'm still wondering what Ronald Drumpf was thinking - 

SR: Is he the one who gold-plated his building? 

JK: Unfortunately, yes. 

SR: His wife made a pass at me during a gala at the Met, you know. Brought me a drink and said she'd never known I was so – large. Then said I had some lint on my jacket and started picking at my medals. 

JK: Oh dear. I'd heard they were having trouble, but - 

SR: Her husband came up and started asking her what was going on. Fortunately Jameson – that editor for the _Bugle_ , you know the one? - followed him and told her I was a 'roid freak,' whatever that means, and everything about me was fake. I just shook my head and walked away. Not worth the argument.

(sound of shuffling papers)

JK: Well. I understand you have some questions about my book. 

SR: More like corrections. There aren't many but I figured you'd want to know for the next edition. 

(sound of crackling paper)

I brought a list – figured it would be easier this way.

JK: I'm almost afraid to see it – oh. This is much shorter than I thought it would be.

SR: Like I said, you got almost everything right. You did a good job. The thing about the Oscar, though - 

JK: I was actually very surprised to learn that you'd been awarded one. There's nothing in print, even the official lists of Oscar winners or your official Army biography. If the New-York Historical Society didn't have the actual statuette I wouldn't have even mentioned it.

SR: I still don't know why they did that. _Cap Smacks the Japs_ was awful, just awful. 

JK: The citation said it was due to your role raising morale on the home front.

SR: It shouldn't have. The script was terrible and I couldn't act my way out of a paper bag. 

(sighs)

Didn't help morale much, either. Soldiers hated it, Jim Morita said he wanted to punch me - 

JK: I thought he was one of the Howling Commandoes.

SR: He was, and we were friends. Still was mad until he found out I didn't have a choice. It's why I pitched a fit about how racist the comic books were and made sure to talk about how he was our radioman when I gave interviews. It was the least I could do.

JK: That couldn't have been easy. It wasn't a tolerant time.

SR: You're telling me. My best friend when I was little was Jewish, I got called names for being Irish, Buck and I got called faggots - 

JK: I didn't know that. 

SR: A big tough guy like Bucky and a shrimp like me? Of course we got called names. One of the first times I got beat up was when a couple guys who'd seen me walking home from work with him caught me alone. I managed to get away, but it taught me a lesson, let me tell you. I never said a word against homosexuals after that.

(sound of typing)

JK: Mm. Can you tell me why you agreed to make that particular film? I know it was the war, but - 

SR: Would you believe the original script was worse? I had to fight like crazy to them to soften it as much as they did. 

JK: Some people would question whether that was enough.

SR: (heavy sigh) I threatened to quit. They threatened to send me to off to some testing facility in New Mexico - 

JK: Alamogordo? The Manhattan Project wouldn't have needed you. It was about weapons development, not biomedicine.

SR: Colonel Phillips had threatened to send me there as a test subject before I agreed to do the USO tour for Senator Brandt, but I found out later he'd misunderstood what they were actually doing. I didn't know better, but _Cap Smacks the Japs_ was nothing compared to being vivisected.

(sighs again)

Never thought I'd still have to deal with it all these years later, but at least no one blames me for the script - 

[several minutes of discussion about _Cap Smacks the Japs_ and the NYU panel redacted]

SR: - and then I actually did end up at a testing facility. Didn't know it right away, not until the bats got loose.

JK: Bats?

SR: Yeah. It was spring of 1943, April or – no, it was May. Definitely May. I was done in Hollywood so the USO decided to send me out on tour. There was a base in New Mexico and - 

JK: Wait. You mean Project X-Ray?

SR: Project – oh. Is that what they called it? I never actually heard the name, but I sure saw the results. I thought the base CO was going to have a stroke, all those bats flying around and then blowing up.

JK: You _saw_ it? 

SR: Oh, yeah. We were setting up for the show in the mess hall when someone came running in screaming about bats. Everyone ran outside and there they were, hundreds of 'em, all over the place. 

JK: Had you seen bats before? I know you spent your entire life in the city before the bonds tour.

SR: Not when Mama and I lived down near Delancey, but after I went to the orphanage, sure. The nuns sometimes took us to Coffey Park at night when it was too hot to sleep and we'd see bats swoopin' around. The girls'd squeal, thought the bats'd get in their hair, but Sister Polycarp said that was silly, the bats were too busy chasing mosquitoes to bother us.

Anyway. I got outside and there were these bats - 

JK: They'd gotten loose?

SR: They were everywhere! I'm not sure what happened, but I'd never seen anything like it. Bats in the Jeeps, bats in the roofs, bats flying at people and buildings and even the water tower – it was like something out of one of those horror movies they make, you know, the ones where giant bugs take over? Only these were regular bats, just with little incendiaries strapped to them.

JK: That must have been something to see.

SR: That's one way of putting it. I swear, I couldn't move for a good half-minute or so, just stood there staring at all these bats. Then one of the girls – I think it was Alice? Maybe Marty? - screamed, and a Jeep blew up and the whole test range started to burn.

JK: Were you and the rest of the tour in danger? Mrs. Carlisle told me there was at least one time when the actor who played Hitler became extremely upset over something and I wondered if this was it.

SR: Actor? What – oh, yeah. That month they were using a draftee who'd lied about his age. He thought it would be fun to play Hitler, at least until he forgot his blocking and I clocked him by accident. I felt awful, he was only sixteen or seventeen - 

JK: (sound of typing) I definitely want to know more about that once we've finished with the bats. Was this the boy Mrs. Carlisle was talking about?

SR: Probably, he started yelling and trying to herd the girls back into the bus, then curled up in a corner and screamed blue murder. Then someone said the bats were heading _under_ the bus and I knew I had to do something before we were really in trouble. So I grabbed that prop shield, pulled on my cowl, and started climbing the nearest water tower. I figured if I could bring it down, it might put out the fire before it reached the ammo dump. 

JK: Bring it down? With you on it? Wouldn't it have been better to wait for the base fire crew?

SR: Normally, yeah. But the bats were _everywhere_ and there wasn't time. Breaching the tank or bringing the tower down on the fire was the only way to keep the whole base from going, and I was the only person who could without drowning or breaking my neck.

So I ran up the tower - 

JK: There were steps? Or was it a ladder?

SR: Ah, well, neither, not really. They were in the middle of repairing the ladder and the catwalk on the tower, so I had to use handholds. Didn't slow me down all that much - 

JK: That's not a surprise.

SR: - and before I knew it, I was right by the mechanism that controlled the water flow. There was a hose on it already so I figured they'd already set it up for an accident, so I grabbed the hose, turned on the tap, and let 'er rip. 

It wasn't easy to control but it was better than trying to slam my way into a water tank with the prop shield. Hit the general's Jeep just before the gas tank blew, and then I figured out how to aim it at the munitions. The fires went out and I think most of the bats that hadn't blown up drowned. 

JK: Drowned?

SR: From all the water I sprayed on them. Maybe one or two survived, but honestly, I didn't care much at that point. The ammo dump would have taken out half the base, including me. 

JK: There must have been a lot to clean up.

SR: No kidding. The ashes were too hot to touch for a couple hours, and then there were the dead bats all over the place. Some of their ordnance was still live so they had to have it checked by the bomb disposal squad, too, so they couldn't start even after the ash cooled. Smelled awful, smoke and burned wood and, well, _bats_ , plus gasoline spilling from a couple of Jeeps that were damaged by the fire hose before the bats could get underneath and blow 'em up. I wasn't sure whether the base commander was gonna shake my hand or bust me down to buck private once he saw the mess.

(rustling sound)

Say, is that a picture of the base? That water tower looks familiar. 

JK: That was taken about an hour later. I'm surprised you aren't in it since you put out the fire.

SR: Oh, that was deliberate. 

JK: Deliberate?

SR: Yeah, the Army didn't want the krauts – sorry, the Germans – knowing that I was more than a stage act. It didn't work too well since part of the show was me hoisting a motorcycle over my head, but they tried. They had a no-photo policy of me starting when I finally forced them to let take a quick paratrooper course.

JK: So there was a no-photograph policy? That's good to know.

SR: Good to know?

JK: It's been something of a open question for years since there were comparatively few pictures of you before you made it to Europe. Mrs. Carlisle has some from the USO Tour - 

SR: Yeah, Sally had a camera and used to take snapshots all the time. Got a great one of me taking off my greasepaint in Milwaukee I think she called it “America's sweetheart” or somethinf, especially after someone handed me a can of Blatz. 

JK: - as well as some behind the scenes pictures from the _Kid Colt_ movies. You look like you were enjoying yourself.

SR: Those were a lot more useful than you'd think. Gave me a chance to figure out what I could do physically without actually going into combat, plus I had a lot of fun. I get pretty restless if I'm not active, and all that riding and running and jumping burned off excess energy. You sit around a lot on movie sets, you know, and it drove me nuts.

JK: What else did you do in Hollywood? I know you did some USO shows with Desi Arnaz and appeared at the Hollywood Canteen, but there are rumors of - 

SR: That I dated a couple starlets? Those were arranged by the studios. I had no idea how to ask a girl for a date beyond asking if I could sketch her, and I stopped doing that in art school the third time someone slapped me for being fresh. 

(sighs)

I actually needed to sketch a live model that wasn't Bucky or his sister for an assignment, but it wasn't worth a black eye. I finally gave up and sketched Mrs. Barnes. She didn't mind as long as I didn't ask her to take her clothes off, like I'd even ask.

(sighs again)

Anyway. Those “dates” were anything but. The studio publicists would tell me I was having dinner with, say Whitney Frost or Carole Landis or someone else, and I needed to ready at 1900. They'd send a car, we'd pick up the girl, and we'd go out to a supper club for a couple of hours. A photographer would take a picture of us talking about something, it would hit the gossip columns, and that would be it. Supposedly it was good publicity of something.

JK: I thought Whitney Frost was dating Calvin Chadwick by then.

SR: Yeah, she was, and I was writing to Peggy Carter off and on. It was all fake.

(chuckles)

The funny thing is, Agnes – that was her real name, Agnes Culley – and I got along better than almost anyone else I met. She was a major partner in Isodyne, one of the big California defense contractors, so we could actually _talk_ about the war instead of faking it for the cameras. She'd met Howard Stark a couple of times and knew something about Project Rebirth, too, so I didn't have to pretend I'd taken extra vitamins and had a late growth spurt. Having dinner with her was actually kind of nice since I didn't have to lie about what I was or what had happened to me. 

Of course half the time I didn't know what she was talking about. She was smarter than Howard, and that's saying something. I'm not sure why they didn't have her working on the Manhattan Project instead of making movies. 

JK: Intelligent women were often dismissed back then, especially if they were good looking. Hedy Lamarr was another example. Did you know she designed a crucial bit of the technology used in cell phones?

SR: Really? Never knew that. I only saw her at a couple parties, never had the nerve to say hello. She was just gorgeous, you know. Her and Vivien Leigh. 

(laughs softly)

Wish I still had my sketchbook from back then. It was full of drawings I did at the Hollywood Canteen and on the set. I wonder what happened to it?

JK: Oh dear. They didn't tell you? 

SR: (groans) You'd be surprised how much they haven't. It's in a museum, right?

JK: Three, actually. 

SR: _Three?_

JK: The New-York Historical Society has most of it, but the Smithsonian has some drawings from the set of _Cap Smacks the Japs_ \- 

SR: Of course it does. I wish I'd never done that thing.

JK: - and a private World War II museum near Boston has two or three pages. They've been fighting over how to exhibit them for years. 

(pauses)

Maybe they'll stop quarreling if you ask for them back.

SR: The Smithsonian's already given me a few things from their collection, so it's worth a shot. Not sure about the rest – didn't know about the private museum. The Historical Society can keep what they have as long as they don't release that film where the eagle attacks me. That goes viral and I'm a national laughingstock.

JK: I don't think you need to worry about that. (hesitates) You're probably tired of hearing this, but you're a cultural institution, Captain. That won't change no matter what shows up on YouTube.

SR: Have _you_ seen that one? 

JK: (pauses) Yes. Once. 

SR: Including the outtakes?

JK: (pause that verges on the uncomfortable) If you mean the one where the bird loses bowel control - 

SR: Damn, I knew you'd seen it. 

JK: It's hard to find. Most copies don't include that part.

SR: The only thing in it that wasn't a prop was the damn – sorry, I didn't mean to swear - 

JK: It's perfectly fine. 

SR: - eagle. Everything else was fake.

JK: The vegetables were fake?

SR: You really think they had cabbages that big? 

JK: Well, my farmstand sells big ones, but I think they're a different variety. 

SR: The ones in that short were fake. Every one of them. The radishes, the corn, the tomatoes – all of them were straight from the Prop Department. Real ones would have gone bad fast under the studio lights.

The bird, though - _she_ was real. Hated my guts, too. That's why she tried to take out an eye before the cameras even rolled. The handler said it was just nerves, but I knew better. That bird had a temper.

JK: We have eagles around here, up in Gill. They're not exactly friendly.

SR: Not surprised. You know, Benjamin Franklin wanted our national bird to be the wild turkey? They're smarter than you'd think and a lot better tempered than eagles. I wouldn't have minded making a film with one of them.

JK: We have those, too. A flock of them hangs out on the athletic field, down by Paradise Pond.

SR: Is that the pond in the middle of campus? The views of that mountain - 

JK: Mount Tom.

SR: It's a great view. I'd love to draw it. 

JK: The faculty club is near the pond if you're interested in grabbing a bite. It's almost lunchtime if you're hungry.

SR: (laughs) Dr. Katzenberg, I'm always a little hungry. If you don't mind me drawing on the placemat, I'd be honored.

JK: The honor is all mine, Captain Rogers. Let me turn off my recorder and - 

(recording ends)

**Author's Note:**

> Bat bombs - yes, this was a real thing. A dentist who knew FDR suggested that sleepy bats would be great for delivering incendiary bombs, and preliminary tests indicated that it would work. Then a military base almost blew up thanks to the bats getting loose, and that was the end of Project X-Ray.
> 
> Ted Geisel - the legal name of Dr. Seuss. He was an editorial cartoonist for the radical magazine PM, with cartoons that ranged from on point to horribly racist. He later apologized for the racist propaganda.
> 
> Ronald Drumpf and his wife - just guess.


End file.
